Vince Chadwick

News travels fast in Wallonia. ''Ah yes, Mathias Cormann,'' says the stationmaster at Eupen, a sleepy town in the hills near Belgium's border with Germany. ''He is the new finance minister of Australia. I read it in the local paper.''

In nearby Raeren - the even sleepier village where Cormann grew up - the pharmacist, an ice-cream seller and a local councillor all say the same thing. ''I read it in the local paper,'' they say.

This is the kind of place where the bus drops schoolchildren at the front door of their homes set beside luscious meadows dotted with ponies.

''The geography is perfect for potting,'' says one tourist website, explaining Raeren's celebrated ceramic exports from the Renaissance until the 19th century. ''A rich loamy earth, with plenty of clear running water and enough woodland to fire the kilns.''

A combination of war damage and the discovery of porcelain defeated the master potters and now many of the village's 10,000 inhabitants work at an aluminium plant, while others make the round trip each day to factories in Germany.

That's what Herbert Cormann was doing in 1970 when he and his wife Hildegard had their first child, Mathias. Forty-three years later the West Australian senator - who has since taken Australian citizenship - was sworn in to Tony Abbott's cabinet, prompting one Belgian headline to trumpet: ''A Belgian in charge of the Australian Budget''.

Raeren's location less than five kilometres from the German border puts it within an 854-square-kilometre German-speaking pocket of east Belgium. The German-speaking community makes up 0.7 per cent of the country's population.

Cormann learnt French during his last three years of high school in Liege and at law school in Namur, before adding Flemish during his graduate studies in Leuven, 25 kilometres east of Brussels in the Flanders region.

''I have fond memories of Leuven,'' Cormann said in a recent interview with his alma mater, Catholic University of Leuven. ''They were the best years of my life. All those young people pursuing academic excellence and enjoying life to the fullest at the same time.''

He did not learn English until 1993 during an exchange to Norwich at the University of East Anglia.

Describing Australia to his former university in Leuven, Cormann said: ''Everyone has a foreign background here. Only it's a bit further in the past for some than for others. If you come here with the intention to really apply yourself, the possibilities are limitless.''

Today, a crayon kangaroo sketch in the hallway is the only hint of the antipodes at the family home in Raeren where Cormann's promotion to finance minister is still sinking in.

''At first it doesn't compute,'' says Herbert, 65, in his non-native French.

However, Cormann was always interested in politics: collecting newspaper articles, working for a member of the European Parliament and figuring out what mattered through long conversations with his mother.

''With him I could speak about anything, at any age,'' Hildegard says in English. The 64-year-old took language classes following a visit to Australia with her husband in 2009 for Cormann's wedding to Perth lawyer Hayley Ross (now Hayley Cormann).

''My son and I always spoke about people who are very rich and people who are very poor,'' Hildegard says. ''We spoke about life, and he was very interested in speaking about that. I liked it because he wanted to change things that are not good.''

When Cormann was 10 years old his father spent six months in hospital with a near-fatal illness that at one point left him weighing just 36 kilograms.

''Mathias learnt everything necessary to look after the other children and do the housework,'' Herbert says. ''He became not like a father exactly, but much more observant. He organised all the family affairs.''

At the base of the Cormanns' driveway, their neighbour Heeren Christoph surveys a broken rabbit hutch and beyond it the forest stretching to the German frontier.

''It is a bit weird, I suppose, to think of the person I used to play hide and seek and football with over there as the finance minister of Australia.''

Christoph, who is five years younger than Cormann, has also entered local politics in Raeren.

''Everyone comes to you if they have a problem,'' Christoph says. ''It's a small village, but it is a bit like a big family.''

Cormann still asks his parents for updates about political developments in the region. ''I still feel quite Belgian,'' he told Catholic University of Leuven. ''Tintin sketches hang in my office. And I take every opportunity to meet Belgians visiting Australia.''

Herbert dropped English classes after one year, but took up a computing course to help the family stay in touch via email. ''My wife doesn't understand the computer and I don't understand English,'' he jokes.

Cormann's three younger sisters live nearby with their families but Hildegard admits it is hard to have her son's family, including seven-month-old granddaughter Isabelle, so far away. ''I see them in the computer but not in my arms,'' she says. ''It's not the same.''